Monday, August 20, 2012

The book is a compilation of words that somehow incorporate an attribute of
that word just using the letters it’s made from.

Let me give
you a few examples:

Elevator:
the letter ‘V’ becomes a down button, the letter A without the crossbar
become the up button. (See the image on the above book cover.)

Rabbit: The capital letter ‘R’ is turned
upside down so that we see the rabbit ears sticking up.

Parallel: all the ‘l’s’ are made to run the
whole length of the page running parallel with each other. The remaining letters are just normal.

These are all
fairly straight forward examples that show the playful side of these constructions. There are some word-images that are really,
really clever but are a little more difficult to describe so that you’ll ‘see’
their impact.

Pollution: The word is located on the bottom
edge of the page. The two ‘l’s represent
smokestacks spewing out black smoke that colours in the top of the
page. The page is most black with
graduations of grey.

New
Orleans:
only the top half of these words appears on a write background and the missing bottom half are submerged.

China/Tibet:
Against a red background the huge, yellow, capitalized letters of China dominate the page.
The word Tibet, in small white letters is engulfed
in the ‘C’ in China.

My favourite
is Israel/Palestine which you will just have to see for yourself. Too much would be lost in trying to describe
it.I hope I’ve given enough description that you can get a sense of what some
of the constructions entail both visually and metaphorically. Check out the author's website for more examples.

The author
includes the ‘rules’ for constructing the word images which are basically to
use only the shapes of the letters without adding extra parts.

What great
potential for a classroom activity to demonstrate understanding for a
topic. Language arts, social studies and
art could all be connected with this little book and the extension it provides. The book is entertaining for many age levels but you should note that a couple of word-images, with more adult connotations, might make some people uncomfortable. Makes you want to start making your own word-images, doesn't it?

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About Me

I am the reference coordinator at The Doucette Library of Teaching Resources, a curriculum library in the Werklund School of Education at the University of Calgary.
I love connecting education students and teachers with engaging and exciting resources for classroom teaching. I believe that resources that get me excited (or those that get you excited) are the ones with the best potential to get kids interested in learning about - well, everything. Finding those books that connect to the real world are the ones I enjoy promoting the most.